What's my IP address?

Find your public IP address number

What is an IP address?

If you’re somehow related to the hosting and web development market, then you probably have wondered sometimes how to check your IP, or how to find your IP address, or asked yourself, “what’s my IP address?”.

Today we’re going to show you how to find the IP of your computer, notebook, tablet or mobile phone.

But before talking about how to find your IP, do you know what an IP is? Also, it’s not a bad idea to properly know the types of IPs that are out there. Generally speaking, there are two types of IP addresses in the Internet world: IPv4 and IPv6.

An IP address is not a random couple of letters, they actually are the initials of Internet Protocol, which means that an IP is, in fact, a protocol. But not any kind of protocol, it is a communications protocol.

It shares a place in the Internet protocol suite, where a lot of other Internet protocols can be found, but that’s not something that we’re going to explore now.

The IPs are used to send and receive data packets across the Internet. Thanks to the IPs, is possible for our computers, notebook, smartphones and other devices to connect to the servers.

Due to this, the IPs are one of the most important features of the Internet. In fact, there’s no Internet without IPs.

Like we said, the IPs task is to deliver the data packets from one host to another, which is done using the IP address of the different hosts.

The history of the IP goes back to 1974. An early version of this protocol was mentioned in a publication of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, which described a protocol used to send and received data packets across networks. It was written by Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf, both recognized as the fathers of the Internet.

The first four versions of the IP (0 – 3) were developed between 1977 and 1979, while the most used version, IPv4, was launched in 1980, and is the most used one nowadays.

Version 5 is used in the Internet Stream Protocol, which is an experimental protocol. Version 6, also known as IPv6, has been around since the 90’s, but until July 2017 it wasn’t considered an Internet Standard.

Nowadays, IPv6 is considered the successor of the IPv4, and as of April 2018 is behind the 20% of the Internet traffic. Despite this, most of the Internet is still based on the IPv4 protocol, which still has a lot of life ahead, and will be around even after IPv6 takes its place.

What is a private IP address?

In case you didn’t know, there’s another classification for IP addresses: private or public.

While the IPs on the Internet are all public, the IPs that make a private network are all private IPs, and different private networks may use similar private IP addresses, after all, if they are private networks they won’t be able to reach or disturb other private networks.

A private IP address is usually used in home, office and LAN networks and looks like this:

192.168.1.102

While most of the public IP addresses are assigned to organizations or entities, the private IPs are not assigned to anyone in particular, and they’re simply labeled “private” and may be used across different private networks as we said.

Some popular private IP ranges are:

10.0.0.0 to 10.255.255.255
172.16.0.0 to 172.31.255.255
192.168.0.0 to 192.168.255.255

A private IP address can’t directly reach the Internet, to do this, it’s necessary to use a NAT or a proxy server.

A lot of corporations use big private networks to avoid connecting to the Internet for security purposes.

How do I find my local IP address?

To find the local IP address of your computer, which is different from the public IP address of your network, just follow these steps.

Find your local IP address on Windows

Hit the Start menu button and type “cmd” in the search box. This should display the cmd application icon, so click it. A little command line will be displayed for you, type “ipconfig” in there and hit Enter.

A lot of information is displayed, but the one you’re looking for will say “IPv4 Address” and a number. That number is your local IP address.

Find your local IP address on Mac (also called OS X)

Open the Apple menu and search for “System Preferences”. Once System Preferences is opened, click the Network icon.

In the left said you will see a list of options, for example, Ethernet, Bluetooth, WiFi, etc. Click the one on the top and it will display a text like “Your computer is connected to NETWORK and has the IP address…” that number right there is your local IP.

Find your local IP address on Linux

This should work in most of Linux distros. Just open up a Terminal, type the following and hit Enter:

hostname --ip-address

The displayed IP will be your local address.

How do I know if my IP is static or dynamic?

There are two very easy ways to check this. The first is one directly asking your provider. Just give them a call to find out, send them an email, etc.

Depending on your ISP, that may take you 5 minutes or you may be directed to another operator, and then to another, and another, and so on…, if it takes too long, just keep reading.

Looking at the top of this page you will find your IP address number assigned by your ISP.

Then simply reset your Internet modem, or turn it off and on, and once the Internet connection is back, try reloading this page again and look at the top, there you will find your IP address number.

If your IP number changed, then your IP is dynamic. If the IP address is still the same, then it’s static.

How to find your router’s IP address?

This will be different depending on your operating system. Let’s take a look at Windows first.

Windows

Open the Start menu and search for the cmd application. Open it and type the following command:

ipconfig

Under the Ethernet section, look for the Default Gateway. You will find your router’s IP address on the far right. Usually, it is 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.

Linux

Under Linux, open up a Terminal and type:

route -n

The IP will be displayed under Gateway, and like previously said it will probably be 10.0.0.1 or 192.168.1.1.

MacOS

Finally, if you use Mac OS X, start by opening the Apple menu and click on System Preferences, and then select the Network icon. Select the topmost option on the right, which should be Wi-Fi or wired, and then click Advanced.

Now click the TCP/IP tab and look for Router on the bottom: your router’s IP will be displayed right there.

These are the simplest steps to find out which is the IP address that belongs to your router.